Creative Catalysts

This weekend Sophie and I went to her high school’s production of RENT, which is set in the East Village in New York, during the same time when I lived there. During the years after I left the Garment Industry, I had a business on 10th St and Ave B, next to the Life Café. We had a gallery around the corner on Avenue B. I lived in the first renovated buildings in the neighborhood: first on 10th St next to the Russian/Turkish Bath & Sauna (our shared brick wall was always HOT) and later on 7th and Ave B.

That was back in the 80s when the Punk Scene was flourishing in the East Village. As depicted in RENT, it was also the time that artists we knew were dying of HIV, and many lived as squatters in abandoned buildings. When 250 homeless people were living (and sometimes rioting) in Tompkins Square Park across the street, it was time for me to go.

Boulder was a very tame and safe place and I was happy to return to my home town in 1990. However creativity often flourishes in the most extreme adversity, and those of us who have survived great challenges and gone on to have a creative career….we are forever changed and enriched by those challenges, aren’t we?

I was just reading about the Quiet Room at the Guggenheim Museum, where you can go experience absolute silence for 10 minutes. Then I heard something on the radio about how a certain level of background noise statistically makes people more creative. That could be music, the buzz of a coffee shop, or having colored background noise such as “pink” or “brown” noise. Who knew?

I really enjoy these stories about how tweaking our work environment can stimulate more creativity. Scientists and researchers are motivated to measure and prove these creativity catalysts, because human creativity is so valuable.